Chapter 54 - A Seedling
Although the castle was clean again, it wasn't wet, mainly thanks to Meirin's control over water. She was an eighth level water mage, her control was perfect. The water only washed away the dirt until the castle was practically shining, and then there was nothing left but a little water vapor after she was done.
After Meirin cleaned the castle, Zhao immediately took the supplies back out from his space, along with some corn stalks for the kitchen and the slaves. After all, they needed this stuff to live. Once those things were taken out, Zhao left Meg to finish cleaning the castle, while he took Meirin to go check out the valley. He wanted to see if the valley also became the same as the rest of the Black Waste.
Green also wanted to look at the valley with Zhao. If it hadn't been contaminated, it would be considered a good source for growing food.
Meirin used her water spells to bring them over the lake and straight towards the valley. Zhao's heart was disturbed. He feared that the valley would be no different than the rest of the Black Waste.
Once they made it to the valley, Zhao was silent. It was as he expected, the land in the valley he had improved returned to its original look. But as he was looking at the valley, he discovered a problem.
There were no footprints.
There was no indication that anything had been on this land. If the spirit beasts hasn't been here, then how could the land become like this?
Zhao was puzzled. Next to him, Green sighed. "If there are no footprints, then it seems that those flying spirit beasts were here, spreading their poison."
Hearing what Green said, Zhao looked up towards the mountain and saw a few black spots here and there. It really seemed like Green was right, that it was because of the toxins from the flying spirit beasts.
Zhao felt depressed. Not only did they have to deal with spirit beasts on the ground, they also had to deal with the ones flying in the sky?
Just then, while searching the ground, Meirin suddenly shouted. "Ah, Master, come look!"
Zhao and Green didn't know what Meirin was so excited about, so they rushed over and were shocked at what she showed them.
In front of them was a seedling. A tiny corn seedling.
In front of their eyes was a small seedling, but do not forget that this land had been turned into black earth, so seeing it grow, wasn't it strange?
Looking at these seedlings, Zhao was puzzled. "How could it grow when the land has become like this?"
Meirin and Green didn't know how to answer him, they too didn't understand why. Zhao clawed at the ground around the seedling, and found that even if the surface had turned into black soil, the roots of the seedling were being nurtured by the fertile earth. The roots were very sturdy, allowing it to grow.
Looking at these seedlings, Zhao was reminded of something from his past life, when he saw corn seeds in rural areas. He was shocked to discover that those corn seeds were pink, and not the golden color that he was expecting. Thinking that it was strange, he questioned the people about it, and they laughed because, of course, corn seeds weren't actually pink. The reason that they were that color was because they were treated corn seeds.
In the north, because of the climate and the worms, it was difficult to grow corn. So they needed to treat the corn seeds with pesticides to help them sprout and survive until they grew into seedlings.
Growing in such a difficult environment reminded Zhao of this situation. Of course, he wasn't thinking of using pesticides and killing insects. He was thinking about dousing these seedlings with spatial water to help them grow. He wanted to see if corn could grow without land improvement, because now the spatial water had detoxification abilities.
Green and Meirin were standing there motionless while looking at the seedlings. They were very surprised, thinking that they would see a catastrophe with all the planted corn being destroyed. Never did they expect that the corn seeds would survive.
Zhao patted the earth and stood up. "Grandpa Green, Grandma Meirin, after we go back and settle things, we can use the spatial water on these tiny seedlings. Since the spatial water can detoxify, maybe it can also improve the land. The success rate might be low, but if it is successful, we can do it many times in one day."
Meirin was surprised. "Master, didn't you say that you could only improve one mu of land per day?"
"Certainly, the space has specified that we couldn't do so much land improvement, but it never said anything about just using the spatial water. We'll need some more land to test, and I have a lot of corn in my barn that we could use as corn seeds. Let's try it to see whether we could do it or not."
Before Meirin could speak, Green nodded his head and said, "Master, this is a good idea, but will we run out of spatial water?"
Zhao chuckled. "That shouldn't be the case. When so many of us were living inside the space, we were drinking water every day. The amount of water everyone drank per day was certainly not a small amount, yet did you see if there was less spatial water?"
"There really wasn’t any decrease," Green recalled. "This is really great, Master. But I still think we should first go send the radishes to the Markey Company. Then we could start growing oil fruit seeds and alfafa seeds on the mountain. Once we douse it with spatial water, we can slowly change the mountain land to shorten the growth period of the oil fruit trees. Once we have a good harvest, then we can have a fixed income."
Zhao nodded. "Yes, we should do that. But I'm a bit worried that when we go deliver the radishes, what would happen to the people in the castle when we leave? If those spirit beasts attacks, they will be unable to resist."
Green laughed. "Master, what are you worrying about? We can just take everyone with us inside the space."
Zhao thought for a moment, and then smiled. He forgot about that. With his space, he could simply take everybody with him. After all, protecting everyone was the most important.
'This is a good idea." Meirin nodded. "Also, we shouldn't disguise how damaged the castle looks. The people in the Continent already knows about the disaster with the spirit beasts invading the Black Waste, so if they send someone to come see, it would be like we were playing dead. Perhaps in the future, we wouldn't need to worry about those guys."
"I fear that it may not be that easy since you've just cleaned up the castle," Green said. "If someone were to look at it, then I'm afraid that we won't be able to hide it for too long. Once we head out, we can only stay away for a short time, so the only thing we should do is sell the radishes."
Meirin gave a wry smile. She never really thought that it would be a mistake to clean too fast.
"Well, then we should go as soon as possible, and not be found out by those guys," Zhao said.
"Then Master, we should go back and start at once. There are a lot of things that have to be done."
Translator Notes: I looked it up, and some corn seeds that have been treated with pesticides really are pink. Weird.
Translator Notes #2: This chapter was MTLed by Trung and edited by Kinokey. Please leave a comment if you've spotted anything that looks wrong.